EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 30 1 



Speaking of the Dakotas, who are politically unorganized, and who 

 had not even nominal chiefs till the whites began to make distinctions 

 among them, Burton says, " Ceremony and manners, in our sense of 

 the word, they have none ; " and he instances the entrance of a Dakota 

 into a stranger's house with a mere exclamation meaning " Well ! '' 

 Bailey remarks of the Veddahs, that in addressing others " they use 

 none of the honorifics so profusely common in Singhalese ; the pronoun 

 ' to,'' ' thou,' being alone used, whether they are addressing each other, 

 or those whose position would entitle them to outward respect." 

 These cases will sufficiently indicate the general fact that where there 

 is no subordination, speeches w T hich exalt the person spoken to and 

 abase the person speaking do not arise. Conversely, where personal 

 government is absolute, verbal self-humiliations and verbal exaltations 

 of others assume exaggerated forms. Communities such as we find in 

 Siam, where every subject is a slave of the king, are those in which the 

 inferior calls himself dust under the feet of the superior, while ascribing 

 to the superior transcendent powers, and where the forms of address, 

 even between equals, avoid naming the person addressed. It is in 

 social organizations like that of China, where there is no check on the 

 power of the " Imperial Supreme," that the phrases of adulation and 

 humility, first used in intercourse with rulers and afterward spreading, 

 have elaborated to such extremes that in inquiring another's name the 

 form is, " May I presume to ask what is your noble surname and your 

 eminent name ? " while the reply is, " The name of my cold (or poor) 



family is , and my ignoble name is ." Or, again, if we ask 



where occur the most elaborate misuses of pronouns initiated by cere- 

 mony, we find them among the Japanese, over whom chronic wars long 

 ago established a despotism which acquired divine prestige. 



So, too, on comparing the Europe of past times, characterized by 

 social structures developed by, and fitted for, perpetual fighting, with 

 modern Europe, in which, though fighting on a large scale occurs, it is 

 the temporary rather than the permanent form of social activity, we 

 observe that complimentary expressions, now less used, are also less 

 exaggerated. Nor does the contrast fail when we put side by side the 

 modern European societies that are organized in greater degree for war, 

 like those of the Continent, and our own society, not so well organized 

 for war ; or when we put side by side the regulative parts of our own 

 society, which are developed by militancy, with the industrial parts. 

 Flattering superlatives and expressions of devotion are less profuse 

 here than they are abroad ; and, much as the use of complimentary lan- 

 guage has diminished among our ruling classes in recent times, there 

 still remains a greater use of it than among the industrial classes es- 

 pecially those of the industrial classes who have no direct relations with 

 the ruling classes. 



These connections are obviously, like previous ones, necessary. 

 Should any one say that along with the enforced obedience which mili- 



